Follow the link to view my CG Tuts+ tutorial about how to create a fast-moving, 3D subway train in Cinema 4D and then composite it into a subway station photo to make a realistic scene. The modeling in done in Cinema 4D, and the compositing is done in After Effects

So here’s a tutorial that may mimic a certain theme you’ve seen before. I show you how to create a spider web in Illustrator and then animate it to catch text in After Effects. It’s not limited to just text, you could make it catch anything, even footage. Here’s a link to the font I used. I’ve also included the web I created in Illustrator, in case you don’t have that application you can still follow along. I know it’s a big file, but After Effect’s continuous rasterization was messing up the effects added to the web, so I made it big enough to not require scaling it up. Lastly, I forgot to mention one little part that makes the web a little more realistic, but I didn’t want to go back and redo part of the tutorial since it was already compressed by the time I thought of it. A spider web has slight variations in the thickness of the web, or it at least appears to. It probably has to do with how the light hits it. So there’s a way to achieve this: Just ad a solid with fractal noise as a track matte above your web. Set the track matte to luma with some setting seen here on this screenshot. It just adds a little variance to the web.

Check this tutorial out if you want to see how to model and texture a beach ball in Cinema 4D. The modeling process is pretty easy on this one and then I show you how to use the selection tag to texture the beach ball properly.

This tutorial uses the always handy fractal noise plug-in to create different elements in an outer space scene. Space gas, planets, and star fields originate from this versatile plug-in. With the right settings you have a nice looking galaxy environment that you could move a camera through if you so choose, or it can be a good background for a title sequence.

Here’s a tutorial that is done entirely in After Effects using Trapcode 3D Stroke and Trapcode Particular. It creates a light streak animation that culminates in a glowing logo reveal with a particle explosion. It’s a quick effect that can be used to bring on text or an image, depending on how you color and animate the streaks. It creates something like this.

Check out this tutorial to learn how to simulate camera shake in Cinema 4D. It’s a pretty easy tutorial, but it shows you how to create User Data and use it with Xpresso, which could be good to know when designing other things down the road. Here is a ZIP file that contains the Cinema 4D project to use for this tutorial.

This tutorial shows you how to make an animation of a paper crumpling up into a ball. It uses the cloth tag in Cinema 4D and requires no keyframing, which would save you a ton of time if you need to pull off this effect. I give an example of some settings that work with the cloth tag, but you can tweak the numbers to vary your results. Download the project file here to start the tutorial.

In this tutorial I demonstrate how to model a 3D speaker and use the sound effector in MoGraph to have it move accurately to the beat of a sound file you specify. Here is a ZIP file that contains the Cinema 4D file to start and a short audio file to use.

Cinema 4D users should check out this tutorial on how to create “Super Text.” Super Text is not exact, but similar to what Superman’s font looks like. It has 3D letters that extend far back into a vanishing point. Here is a project file to start you off with the materials I will be using in the tutorial.

This tutorial will show you how to make it appear that a big piece of your footage is being ripped off like a sheet of paper. It tears a top layer and reveals another layer beneath. This tutorial uses Photoshop and After Effects, and deals with alpha channels, track mattes, precomposing, and you need CC Page Turn or a similar page peel plug-in.